The Shakespeare Code

HOW QUEEN ELIZABETH’S CALVINIST STATE TRIED TO DESTROY THE SPIRITUAL IMAGINATION OF ENGLISH CATHOLICS….

AND HOW WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE CAME TO THEIR DEFENCE BY USING…..

FAIRY POWER!!!

A FIVE PART SERIES…..

PART ONE

On 17^th November, 1558, Princess Elizabeth became Queen of England and Ireland.

She inherited from her half-sister, Mary Tudor……..

…..known to history as ‘Bloody Mary’……….

 

……a kingdom that was Roman Catholic.

For the first month of her reign Elizabeth attended the Latin Mass and all Catholic services, wearing a black dress and holding a rosary and missal….

But at Christmas it was all change. She flounced out of  Mass when the Bishop of Carlisle elevated the host.

And on Twelfth Night, Robert Dudley, Elizabeth’s new Master of Horse……….

……put on a court entertainment which shocked the Duke of Mantua’s agent to the core:

He described it as a…..

….mummery performed after supper

….which featured….

….crows in the habits of Cardinals, asses habited as Bishops, and wolves representing Abbots.

This entertainment I will consign to silence. Nor will I record the levities and unusual licentiousness practised at the Court….

Dudley had been Elizabeth’s childhood friend. Now he was her open lover.

Together with William Cecil, her new Secretary of State……….

…….the three intended to destroy Roman Catholicism in England for ever.

It had been introduced by Pope Gregory the Great at the end of the sixth century……..

…….partly for aesthetic reasons…

One day he had seen some handsome slave boys, with beautiful blonde hair, for sale in the market place at Rome. He asked where they came from, and on being told they were Anglo-Saxons, famously remarked:

Not Angles but Angels…

On learning the lads were Pagans, he determined to convert their land to Christianity. So he sent St. Augustine to England….

Gregory was a brilliant psychologist. He said…

You can’t convert a whole people over-night – anymore than you can climb a mountain in a single step…

He instructed Augustine to take over existing Temples and Shrines, clear out the Pagan idols and replace them with crucifixes and relics of Christian Saints. That would give the new faith a warm, familiar feel. Holy Wells stayed Holy Wells…….

……but now they were presided over by Christian Saints, sometimes by the Virgin Mary herself.

Pagan Festivals – like Samhain – which heralded the Autumn –

…..became Hallowmass…..

…….and Yuletide, of course….

……became Christmas.

The Anglo-Saxons also loved roasting and eating oxen on their holidays: so Gregory continued this custom on Dedication Days and Saints’ Days. He wanted the practice of Christianity to be associated with celebration, feasting, holiday and joy.

So for centuries in England, Paganism rubbed along comfortably with Roman Catholicism. The Feast of Fools…….

……..inspired by the Roman Saturnalia……….

…..was brought into the Churches.

The congregation played card games on the high altar, a choir-boy became the bishop……..

……. and the ‘Amen’ at the end of each prayer was replaced by a donkey’s bray…

But there was already an element of magic in Roman Catholicism itself……

The Catholic Priest – regardless of any shortcomings he might have as a man – possessed the miraculous power of turning bread and wine into the literal body and blood of Christ.

 

This had a knock-on effect. People would steal consecrated wafers and holy water for their own uses – bad as well as good – and many Catholic practices became profoundly ambivalent. When you prayed to the Saints, it was as much to ward off harm as to enlist their positive aid.

Babies were baptised largely to save them from Satan….

And Requiem Masses said to stop visits from ghosts.

In fact a Requiem Mass was the most ambivalent practice of all. If you wanted to kill off an enemy, you got a priest to say a Requiem Mass for him…

Priests were more like shamans……….

……blessing fields and wedding beds, exorcising demons and healing the sick.

The new Queen Elizabeth did away with all this. Although her father, Henry VIII…….

……had broken with Rome, he had stayed a Catholic: but her stepmother, Katherine Parr……….

……Henry’s last wife, had been a closet Protestant. She had introduced the young Princess Elizabeth to the teachings of John Calvin………

These had been re-enforced by Elizabeth’s tutors – all Cambridge men and all graduates from the new St. John’s College – a hotbed of Calvinism.

Calvin, like other Protestants, taught that Scripture was everything. If it wasn’t in the Bible, it wasn’t Christianity.

So out went transubstantiation…….

…….purgatory…..

……Saints…….

 

…relics…..

 

…..shrines……

…..pilgrimages…..

…..requiem masses……

…..incense…….

…..copes……

…..processions……

….. and even candles on the altar.

But Calvin also advanced a doctrine which appears NOWHERE in the Bible:

PREDESTINATION.

He argued that because God knows everything, he knows whether you are going to heaven or hell……

…..BEFORE YOU ARE EVEN BORN…

If you are one of the chosen – the elect – he bestows favours to you in this world as well as the next….

Bloody Mary had imprisoned Princess Elizabeth in the Tower of London……..

Elizabeth had prayed to God, God had released her and then made her Queen of England.

So Elizabeth reckoned she must have been one of His ‘elect’.

But if she hadn’t been, there was nothing she could have done about it.

Nothing at all.

She would have been packed off to a predetermined Hell.

The living had no interplay with the souls of the dead – not even with the Virgin Mary and the Saints.

Miracles had ceased with the Apostles and if you saw a ghost…….

……..or even a goblin…..

……..elf……

……..or fairy…..

…….it was an illusion sent from Satan himself.

 

At a stroke, Elizabeth robbed the Catholic Priest of all his power. And his congregation of theirs. There was no intercession, no negotiation, no redemption, no romance, no colour, no magic, no warmth, no joy, no celebration, no hope.

And above all……

….NO DRAMA!!!

This is where William Shakespeare…..

 …..and A Midsummer Night’s Dream……

 …..come in…..

TO READ PART TWO, CLICK: HERE!